I’ve often argued against John Rawls’s theory of justice, and readers who see my title might be thinking to themselves, “Not another post on Rawls!” These readers can rest easy; this is not another post attacking Rawls. (It isn’t, of course, a post that says Rawls was right.) Instead, I want to use an argument someone directed against Rawls to
Murray Rothbard was a polymath, and philosophy is one of the fields to which he made important contributions. When people think of him as a philosopher, though, they often have in mind only his work in ethics and political philosophy, found, for example, in The Ethics of Liberty . His work in this area is of great significance, but he wrote about
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Senator Josh Hawley’s just-published The Tyranny of Big Tech (Regnery, 2021) raises important issues. Hawley asks, for example, Do Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube censor views that that their managers do not like? It seems clear that the answer is yes. Many people who have tried to post
Students often ask me to recommend a good introduction to philosophy, and now the question can be answered more easily than in years past. Michael Huemer’s Knowledge, Value, and Reality , published last April, contains a profusion of arguments on important topics and is written in a conversational style that is easy to follow, and is often very
In my article last week, I talked about Michael Huemer’s notion of “false fallacies.” These are often listed in logic books as bad arguments, but some of them, Huemer suggests, are actually good arguments, at least if suitably modified. This week, I’d like to talk about another false fallacy, one that Huemer doesn’t include on his list. This is
Chandran Kukathas is one of the best contemporary political philosophers, and one of the few sympathetic to libertarian views. Unlike Murray Rothbard, he does not consider self-ownership fundamental but instead defends libertarianism from a different standpoint that is skeptical of principles considered apart from their expression in particular
Uskali Mäki is one of the leading philosophers of economics of the past half century; moreover, he is well versed in Austrian economics, though not an adherent of the school. In this week’s column, I’d like to consider some issues he raises in his paper “ Scientific Realism and Austrian Explanation ” ( Review of Political Economy , 1990). Mäki is
A correspondent sent me an argument I hadn’t heard before that concludes that it’s not morally permissible for libertarians to work for public universities, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine that argument. To telegraph where I’m going, I don’t think the argument works, but even if I’m right, it doesn’t follow that it is morally
Critics of praxeology often claim that it is isn’t really one of the sciences. It isn’t about the empirical world but is mere idle play with words. In this week’s column, I’d like to look at some remarks that the philosopher and linguistics scholar Jerrold Katz makes about rationalism and empiricism in his important and controversial book Language
One thing struck me as especially odd about Google’s ban of LewRockwell.com from its advertising program. This was the claim that articles on this site could “undermine participation or trust in electoral or democratic process.” I suppose what is meant is that the site has published articles that suggest there was substance to President Trump’s
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.